


Chasing shadows

by inthebeginningtherewasM



Series: Cops & Robbers [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Agent!Cassian, F/M, Modern AU, Thief!Jyn, it's all about the chase, they are not really meet-cutes but everything is relative anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 12:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16085960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthebeginningtherewasM/pseuds/inthebeginningtherewasM
Summary: Special Agent Cassian Andor closes cases. He's good at it. He likes doing it. But this one might take a while to close. Guess he has a nemesis now.





	Chasing shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, sweet peas!
> 
> Well, looks like I'm in a Rogue One/RebelCaptain fever again and hey, after 12 years not writing fanfics I thought it's time to just get back on the horse and do the thing. Okay, let's just say I'm really bad at writing notes, edited the flip out of this thing to the point of never wanting to see a single letter again and I read a ton of Rogue One fics here and I'm seriously just so in awe of you guys. 
> 
> Well, have fun with this. And tell me what you think. I'm biting my nails here.

The first time he meets her he is leaning against a wall, bored out of his mind.

After the fiasco with the Kafrene case it might even make sense that he’s not cleared for _real_ active duty yet but that doesn’t mean he has to like it. Damn Dr. Mothma and her psychological profiles.

Cassian surveys the crowd, all those rich people in smart tuxes and expensive dresses, who are making polite conversation and don’t pay him any attention in his borrowed, ill-fitting suit with the bulge under the jacket.

The woman is wearing a red dress and long white gloves, dark hair pinned up in an elegant knot and some understated jewellery around her neck. She’s making her way across the room, from art piece to art piece and is followed by a whole cluster of suitors of any age who all try to attract her attention by telling her interesting bits and pieces about the artwork in front of them. Cassian almost chuckles. Does nobody see the annoyed glimmer in her eyes, the slight flare of her nostrils, how she flexes her fingers? Sure, she is all smiles and politeness – probably required at an event like this – but Cassian picks up her annoyance and desperation and the furrowed brow that quite certainly has nothing to do with concentration. He almost considers dropping something or accidentally tripping a waiter to give her the opportunity to slip away but at the next moment she drowns in the sea of men and is out of his sight.

 

She suddenly shows up at his side with two champagne glasses and leans against the wall right next to him a few minutes later.

“I thought, I’d never get rid of them”, she says in an (adorable) French accent and offers him the second glass. He declines with a shake of his head.

“ ’umor me? Just pretend?”

She looks at him with such pleading eyes that he can’t help but smile and take the glass. She offers a hand.

“Juliette Marne”, she says and all but grabs his. (She has a surprisingly strong grip.)

“Special Agent Cassian Andor.”

She shows him an almost impish grin and clinks their glasses.

“Well, Special Agent Andor”, she says, “will you be my knight in shining armour tonight? Protect me from all those dangerous individuals?” She gestures with her glass as if she’s looking for an English phrase she cannot quite grasp. “Are you with me?”

He raises an eyebrow. Dangerous individuals?

Surveying the room, he notices the glares from several gentlemen directed at him. And the smitten looks directed at her. This is ridiculous. Sure, she is beautiful but why is every man in here acting like he’s never seen a woman before? Are they not here for the art?

He has to admit, he considers it for a few seconds. He looks at her and how she’s smiling hopefully at him but he can’t. He is here for work, he cannot leave his post.

“I’m sorry, but I’m on duty. I cannot leave here”, he says and in his own ears it sounds weak and unconvincing.

She seems genuinely disappointed but shrugs her delicate shoulders. They stand in a companionable silence for a few moments until she suddenly drowns her glass of champagne and gives him a wink. Then she’s gone. Cassian is not sure what exactly just happened to him.

 

Most of the guests are gone already – he hasn’t seen Miss Marne for a while – when a blaring alarm sounds. Now Cassian leaves his post. He meets up with other agents in the gallery, the remaining guests are scared and herded into an adjacent room by Agent Dameron, a perimeter check is in order. The curator of the exhibition is there, wringing his hands, sweating, until one of the agents actually gives note that one of the display cases is empty. Nothing is broken but the relic inside is gone. (Not from the room Cassian was stationed, thank god, but still. It’s embarrassing for the entire bureau and the investigation will take place under the watchful eye of the public. Not his case though. Cassian doesn’t know if he should be happy about that or not.)

 

+++

 

The second time he sees her she’s talking in a sharp Manhattan accent that goes with her impeccable tailored business suit.

He blinks at her, surprised, and sees a hint of recognition in her eyes, a fleck of panic before her face closes off, she concludes her conversation with whomever at the reception and is swept away to some office by a middle-aged gentleman.

Cassian is (more than) slightly irritated and turns to the receptionist, asking for the name of the lady who was just there. (He’s an FBI agent. He will get an answer.) The receptionist gives him a strange look and lifts his nose even higher than before.

“That’s Miss Kate Morland. She’s an appraiser from New York. A very important person. She’s here to look at an Osman Dagger in Mr. Fletcher’s possession.”

Weird. There is a voice in the back of his head that tells him that something is definitely off here. Unfortunately the man he’s actually here for shows up and he has to go back to his actual work. And she is already gone when he’s finished.

 

(About a week later he will feel like kicking himself for not following this hunch. A very expensive goblet has been stolen. From the case next to the Osman Dagger in the office of one Mr. Fletcher.)

 

+++

 

He even had to go to _fucking Draven_ for help to get the security footage of the Fletcher building. She seems to know how to keep out of the camera angles but in the end there is a shot with her face when she leaves the floor. Nothing conspicuous about her but Cassian _knows_. It was her. He is 99.99% sure of it. What Cassian is not sure of is why he feels like he swallowed a bucket of boiling water. Well, maybe it’s just his hunting instinct kicking in.

 

+++

 

Agent Kay from Technical Analytics sets him an alarm. Whenever an expensive piece of art or something similar is reported stolen, he is informed. (Kay is quite a genius with this tech stuff, really.) A lot of those cases turn out to be insurance fraud but in two cases Cassian is able to find a familiar figure on the security tapes. The estimated value of those stolen artefacts are several million dollars and that’s just the stuff he knows about. She is his case now. Officially.

 

+++

 

It takes a lot of research and an annoyed Agent Kay until he finds something. It’s basically nothing – a grainy picture of her in the file of an old operative who’d gone rogue many years ago and vanished from the face of the earth. But the picture helps him find other pictures, footnotes, camera screenshots, events, guest lists. It takes weeks and months but finally names stand out – Liana Hallik, Sienna Brooks, Alice Bastable, Felicity Jones, Julie Kendrick, Nelly Ternan – and while he still doesn’t have her real name, he’s fairly certain that he now knows what kind of movies she likes to watch. (Come on, it’s a start.)

 

+++

 

He’s fallen asleep over the files again. That happens to Cassian a lot lately. But he cannot stop even though people are looking at him funny and he’s been called into Draven’s and Dr. Motma’s offices all the time. He’s driven. He will find her and bring her in.

It takes him six weeks of severe paperwork and a lot of favours until he finds one of Saw Gerrera’s old contacts who is willing to give up information. The whole transfer is shadier than a drug deal in a dirty alley, taking place in the back room of a bar with too many men with sunglasses (indoors?) and carrying guns. It’s really no wonder and a hell of bad luck that the police storms the bar and takes him into custody along with everybody else.

It’s embarrassing and takes hours until his identity is confirmed but in the end he has what he came for. A children’s crayon drawing of a big black man and a little dark haired girl, labelled “ **Jyn ♡** **Saw** ”.

 

+++

 

The next time he (quite literally) runs into her, he’s stepping out of a deli in Chinatown. A woman in running clothes stumbles into him and he braces her against his chest for a second before letting go, mumbling apologies. Her eyes turn wide when she recognises him and it’s the element of surprise that makes him slow and lets Jyn slip through his grip. She easily outruns him, darts into an alley and crawls up a garbage can to reach the fire escape of the building to the right and makes the leap onto the backwall of the alley. She sits there for a moment and gives him a cheeky grin before slipping out of view.

(He later becomes a regular at that deli – a long shot but one never knows.)

 

+++

 

She seems to acknowledge him and starts toying with him after that. Every crime scene she’s at, every time she steals something, she leaves something for him behind to find. A print of his personal file, unblackend. A bottle of his favourite whisky. A red rose and the blonde wig she was apparently wearing at this particular job. (He didn’t recognise her in that at all – _goddammit_!) A copy of the poem “O captain! My captain!” from Walt Whitman with a kiss of red lipstick pressed at the bottom which is no doubt her way of showing him that she found his military records.

It drives Cassian crazy to know that he is so close every time and still isn’t able to catch her. And why is she taunting him anyway? (He mulls over that question while sitting on the couch in his tiny apartment drinking the whisky she left for him. It would be a shame to let that go to waste.)

 

+++

 

He doesn’t know what unsettles him more – the bruises on her face, the split lip and the unfocusedness of her gaze or the fact that she readily sinks into his arms as he helps her down the stairs of the burning building. Or maybe it’s even that the thought to slap her in handcuffs while she’s sitting in the back of an ambulance doesn’t even cross his mind.

She’s gone before he can get back to his senses, of course. And with her his leather jacket he had, in a fit of temporary insanity, no doubt, put around her shoulders.

 

+++

 

She seems to want to pay him back in kind. Cassian doesn’t know how she knows about the operation in the outskirts of Boston but she’s suddenly there in an FBI windbreaker, pretending to be the liaison for his people on site. She barks orders in a heavy Bostonian accent, ushers his own people to the right places and again he’s just not able to do anything because the situation at hand is far more important than his petty wish to _finally_ nail this woman, to get her in lockup and make her return all those paintings and sculptures and _money_.

 But for some twisted reason he doesn’t want to think about, he’s also so glad that she’s here and that she has his back when he goes in, even though he tells her not to. She takes out a perp with an expert headbutt and carries one of the kids held hostage out of the warehouse like she’s the star in a freaking Hollywood produced FBI recruitment video.

He finds the windbreaker later on a crate with a scribbled note in one pocket informing him that she couldn’t stay to help with the paperwork and that they are even now.

 

+++

 

His social life is severely lacking under all this pressure. He’s alone most of the time even though he sometimes wishes he wasn’t. But there is simply no time for dating. He has so many open cases and works on Jyn’s file in his spare time, he’s definitely not getting enough sleep. That’s how he explains to himself that the first thing that pops into his head, when his cousin asks him to bring a date to her wedding, is Jyn.

He asks fellow agent Shara Bey instead and feels extremely awkward with all the appreciative glances and misplaced congratulations from his various aunts and grandparents who came from far away for this event and collectively have it all wrong. (The awkwardness only gets worse as the whole thing progresses – he doesn’t want to give Shara the wrong impression that he wants something more from her – at least until Shara gets drunk enough to admit that she has a big crush on their colleague Kes Dameron and wants to bear his children. Cassian doesn’t mind – the whole bureau knows about that weird little thing Dameron and Bey have going on. He has a rather good time after that.)

 

+++

 

He’s finally pinned her down but he doesn’t know how to feel about it. Somehow there is none of the pride and relief and satisfaction he imagined. (Well, maybe a little satisfaction.) Cassian watches her sitting in one of the interrogation rooms. She doesn’t seem concerned at all. Not scared. Certainly not remorseful. There is a defiance in her gaze he almost expected and...boredom?

Draven says to let her wait in the IR for an hour or two but she only seems to expect that. They are getting nowhere. He wants to get in there, sit across from her, ask her so many questions. Would it mess everything up? He doesn’t know. He goes to the men’s room on this floor to splash some water on his face. And when he’s back – there is an inexplicable blackout in the whole building and she’s gone again. Just vanished.

He sounds an alarm as soon as the backup generators are running, searches the building from top to bottom. Nothing. It’s impossible. But then again with Jyn nothing ever seems to be impossible. That woman is a freaking enigma. Cassian smashes a coffee mug in frustration, shouts at people, tells them to pull the entire security footage, watches it himself until his eyes burn. He feels angry and confused and _humiliated –_ and guilty for this teeny tiny part of his brain that actually feels relief that she’s out. Jyn is gone and the chase will go on.

 

+++

 

“Why?” She’ll probably lie to his face but Cassian asks anyway. “Why me?”

She searches his face, hesitates. He can see it clearly. After all this time he got very good at reading her, even though they rarely spent time face to face. (Unfortunately he’s rather sure that she knows him too. She _knows_.)

Jyn finally shrugs, slumps back against the vault door. (How ironic that he is stuck in a vault with her, after he accidentally triggered the alarm. Like they are both some common thieves. Like they’re in this together.)

“You are still here”, she says slowly. “You’re a constant. A touchstone.”

That stumps him. He tries not to let his surprise show but he’s afraid at this moment he isn’t very good at it.

“A touchstone?”

Another shrug, but she doesn’t meet his eyes.

“In my line of work you don’t form any connections. You get in, you get out. And afterwards everybody goes their separate ways.”

She fiddles with the hemline of her dress.

“You always come after me.”

Cassian stares at the vault ceiling. There are so many things he could say now but somehow all of them die on his tongue.

“You know that chasing you is my job, don’t you?” It’s more of a croak really.

Again with the shrug.

“You could have given the cases to others. When I started to get...personal...you could have put it down. But you didn’t. Why didn’t you?”

She looks at him through dark lashes, very interested in what he will say or do. Cassian stares at her, opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

 _Why didn’t he?_ He cannot answer this. The thrill of the chase? Maybe. Intrigue? Possible. Frustration? Highly probable.

But if he’s listening to that tiny voice in the back of his head he knows that his reasons are probably the same as hers. She is a constant in his everchanging world. Everything around him is moving so fast – colleagues die, partners get transferred, family members marry and leave, every freaking day at work is a reminder that the world is dark and cruel and lonely. But chasing after Jyn is easy. It stays the same. A mocking grin flashed at him before she makes her escape, a teasing message left behind when he wasn’t fast enough, a glare when he figured her out faster than she would have liked. 

Cassian is still staring at her, even though he tries to keep his face blank and unreadable. She looks at him with those big green eyes and finally gives him a small smile. A real one if he’s not mistaken. She’s probably found the answer in his silence.

Then she gets to her feet and pulls him up, facing the vault door, slipping a hairpin and some electronic device from a garter.

“Let’s get out of here, shall we?”

 

+++

 

It takes all of Cassian’s willpower to keep his face blank and not show any of those agents at their desks that anything is off. His blood is boiling, there is a ringing in his ears, his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.

All of his cases dismissed and given to other agents. The Chicago Butcher. Dismissed. That murder case Melshi had him looking into. Dismissed. Jyn’s case. _Fucking dismissed_. He gets it, he really does. He knows that getting this secret assignment is a big deal and that Draven is, through it, begrudgingly telling him that he is his most capable agent. Bringing an international arms dealer to justice is even a very big deal. But this still sucks. It sucks so bad. It’s ludicrous. Working with a _criminal_ as his partner? Him? Someone who takes a deal and goes free of all charges against him? This is a freaking nightmare. No, he will watch his new “partner” like a hawk. One slipup and he will haul this guy’s ass back to jail.

 

+++

 

His new “partner” waits for him at his desk. Writes something on a piece of paper with his favourite pen.

Cassian stops dead in his tracks. Stares. Stares. Stares.

There she is again. In a green blouse and black slacks and wearing a much too big leather jacket.

“Took you forever in there”, she says with this challenging smile he’s seen so often on her before and this slight British accent he has long learned is native. (He still hasn’t pinpointed from what region her accent is but he will find out eventually.) Is she for real? Has somebody whacked him over the head? It sure feels like it with Jyn standing right in front of him _in the FBI building_ , casually talking to him like she has no care in the world. So this is her next big con. Convincing the FBI to take her on as an asset by dangling an even greater evil than herself in front of them. And she knew that they would bite. He looks down at her until her smile falters and her face wears a serious look. She is close, totally in his personal space.

“I know you don’t like it”, she says. “And I don’t really like it either. But we are in this together now. Or do you want us to get back to our meaningless cat-and-mouse games while people die? Because I might be a criminal but I’ve never been responsible for anyone’s death before. So, are you with me or not?”

He looks at her. Looks, looks, looks. He can’t get a read on her. Does she mean it? Is she really serious? He feels like there is more to it. More to her. (But he’s always known _that_.) He cannot, he _cannot_... He’s taking a giant leap here. But he offers her his hand.

“All the way”, he says and some part of him might actually mean it word for word.

 


End file.
